if you think about the bin laden tape at the end of the 2004 campaign with bush and kerry, bush had been running on this fear and strength and all these issues getting the country animated on this. by the time the surprise happened, it reinforced what the people already believed. the thing that the president and this is why the bin laden assassination sort of worked out. is because people started to trust him that he's not soft on terrorists. ask the terrorists hit by drone strikes. people trust his judgment on this. it's not how you handle -- the president has a pretty good record. >> romney comes out initially after these attacks and flubs it, right? he messes up his response to it. he doesn't realize there's been a statesman killed in the field. can he try to spin this back now? >> if we would exercise patience and waited three days, this would have been a real issue to get your arms around. certainly, the foreign policy questions here, certainly where the president wants this race to be versus the economic factors, the unemployment numbers. one more time the president's team wins on